William Kentridge -Exploring Charcoal and Stop-Motion Techniques

Artist William Kentridge talks about his process of repeatedly erasing and reworking charcoal drawings to create his well-known stop-motion animated films -San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. 

Stop-motion is a technique where the camera is repeatedly stopped and started to give a figure or object the impression of movement. This means the whole scene is captured 1 frame at a time with physical elements that are moved between frames. Therefore, the play-back of this whole sequence becomes animated and brings the scene to life.

Using charcoal in stop-motion creates a dramatic atmosphere as the depiction of transformation can be shown between varying tones, textures and marks that demonstrate fluid movement between each frame. Additionally, charcoal is easy to erase so it is very simple to change one object, shape or figure into something new -making it a widely used and important material in stop-motion animation because of its efficiency.